Furnace Trouble

I was curled up in the popasan chair reading when Andrew came into the living room and started futzing with the thermostat. I asked him what was up, and he replied by asking me if I’d remembered the furnace kicking on lately. Well, I hadn’t actually been paying attention, but no, I didn’t remember it coming on. Turns out the temperature was about 68 degrees (F), but the thermostat was set at 71 and the furnace was not currently on.

We went downstairs to check on the furnace. We followed the manufacturers instructions for troubleshooting, and came up empty. It was already starting to get dark outside, and the temperature in the house was dropping. The forecasted low for the evening was in the single digits…brrr. Andrew called around to various repair places, but no one was able to come out — there had been a cold snap over the past several days, so everyone’s furnace was on the blink.

In the end, we packed up the cats and headed off to the nearby Comfort Inn. We ordered pizza for dinner, and were ready to settle in for a warm night. Unfortunately, the cats were being bad, and we had forgotten to bring a spray bottle (our normal method of discipline). So, Andrew went back to the house to pick one up, along with a few other things we’d forgotten. The house was down to 58 degrees.

Oddly enough, while Andrew was home, one of the repair places called and told him that they were doing another job on our street in about 10 minutes. Would we like the repair man to stop by our place afterwards? Duh. Of course. It was already 9:45 PM, so the repair man didn’t make it to our house until at least 10:30 PM. But he was able to fix it. Yay!

Andrew came back to the hotel, since the house would take a while to warm up, and we would already have to pay for a full night.

About 12:30 AM, though, the cats had decided they’d had enough. Ares started meowing. Then Artemis started meowing. Then Duncan started picking at the door. Unfortunately, in all the furnace excitement, Andrew had forgotten to pack a spray bottle, so we were still without a way to discipline the cats. We tried calming them. We tried yelling at them. We tried everything we could think of. Then I declared that we were going home.

Sigh.

I love our cats. But the house was still cold.

The Sea Lark’s Song

by Diana Marcellas

This is a sequel to Mother Ocean, Daugher Sea, which I read last spring. I’d been waiting anxiously for this second book to come out in paperback, and picked it up on our last trip to Uncle Hugo’s. I was not at all disappointed.

Looking back over the novel, nothing “big” really happened (with the exception of the last chapter), though at no point did the story drag. Lots of small incidents occurred, like the attack on Rowena, and all of them added up to a great story. Though it’s obvious this book is meant as a bridge or set-up for the next book where some major things are now set to occur.

Marcellas continues her excellent style from the first book. She maintains the story and moves it along while still developing sympathetic and believable characters. I’m looking forward to the third book.

Travel Day — Home at last

Ask me how good my steamy, hot, long shower was this morning after not getting one yesterday. I dare you. Ask me.

Oh. Wait. I didn’t have hot water again this morning. I was fooled into thinking that I did have hot water — enough so that I hopped in and shampooed up my hair. But then things started getting cooler and cooler. Turning the water all the way up did not help. So here I am, two days without a real shower.

Yeah. That feels good. Thanks Hilton.

My flight home was delayed, but not by too much, and my luggage made it with me. Any flight where my luggage makes it with me is a good flight.

When I walked into the house, there was a beautiful bouquet of red tulips on the table to greet me. It was from Andrew, Duncan, Ares, and Artemis, though I suspect that Andrew had a big hand in it 🙂 What a sweetie! Of course, I was so tired and worn down, they made me cry, but it was good, happy-to-be-home tears.

The Lion in Winter

I finally was able to get together with Jim and Maggie (my aunt and uncle who live near Atlanta) tonight. They came by the hotel, and whisked me off to the Shakespeare Tavern (a mere 0.5 miles from the hotel) to see their production of The Lion in Winter.

I had never seen this play before (or the movie with Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole), so I went in not knowing what to expect. The basic story is in 1183 King Henry II’s three sons all want the throne. Richard is the obvious choice, being handsome and accomplished in war. John is Henry’s favorite, though, so despite his youth and awkwardness believes he will get the crown. Poor Geoffrey, now the middle child, is often overlooked. During the holidays, Henry allows his imprisoned wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, to come visit. Meanwhile, Henry’s mistress, Alais, is betrothed to one of the sons (though it’s unclear which one). The play is full of scheming, conniving, and witty exchanges.

This production was quite good, though I might agree with Jim that I didn’t like Alais’ performance as much as I could have. I also found John’s portrayal a bit too over the top to be believable.

Lunch Box Memories

Earlier in the week I noticed that a lunch box exhibit was coming to the Museum of Design in Atlanta. I love lunch boxes. I don’t exactly collect them, though I am trying to complete my Star Wars collection (the original movies — I have Star Wars and Return of the Jedi). I also have a Battlestar Galactica lunch box, complete with its thermos. As luck would have it, the Museum of Design is on the block between the Hyatt (where the AAS meeting is being held) and the Hilton (where I’m staying). So I ducked out of the conference for an hour this morning to catch the exhibit.

I’ve actually seen this domed Star Trek lunch box at an antique shop. I believe it was going for about $900 when I saw it 5 years ago. I don’t recall if it had the thermos or not (though I suspect that it did).

There was a display on how the space race influenced lunch boxes — of course I thought these were about the best ones they had. I’ll have to keep an eye out in antique stores for these 🙂

AAS, Day 4

I woke up bright and early, thinking I’d take a nice, long, hot shower. After letting the water run for 15 minutes in hopes of getting that hot shower, I gave up, quickly ducked in to wash my hair, and then shivered for the next 10 minutes trying to recover. Sigh. One might think that a Hilton hotel (normal nightly rate of $178/night) would have hot water. One would be wrong.

After getting myself dressed and ready to go, I headed up to the Starbucks across from the conference site, as had been my habit each morning this week. Unfortunately, this morning was record cold, and everyone in Atlanta had the idea to get a hot drink before work. The line took up the entire store, so I turned around and went right to the Hyatt for the conference. I decided to stop in the hotel’s coffee shop for a chai, and was terribly disappointed by it — they hardly put any flavoring in, so it was rather tasteless.

Not a good morning all-in-all.

The conference was quiet. Jim came by and mentioned that one of the posters was about taking variations in BL Lac objects and turning them into music. They had brought a CD player, so you could actually hear the music. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the poster, and then got distracted by the Astronomy To Go booth — a vendor with lots of cool astronomy stuff. Between my two stops at the booth, I picked up a couple pairs of astronomy socks, a barrette, earrings for Maggie, an ear cuff, and a book for Andrew. Dangerous place.

The day was quiet, and we started tearing down the booths at 4 PM. I was back in my room by 5 PM, resting up for my evening with Jim and Maggie.

AAS, Day 3

We continued people-watching today. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but frankly astronomers are an interesting bunch. And, suppose I need to put myself into that category. One thing that might help our reputations immensely would be the adult equivalent of Garanimals. Remember those? They are mix-and-match clothing where if you buy two pieces with matching animals, you are assured that they match. We could update these for astronomers — say a line of Astranimals. Instead of animals, we could use constellations — match the Big Bear clothes for a snappy outfit, or try the Orion clothes for an evening out.

I took in an invited talk by Sunyaev this afternoon, who was receiving an AAS award. (I knew him from the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect in Astro 1). His talk was on turbulence in galactic clusters and its effect on the iron line. The exciting part is that this effect might be seen in the spectra from the XRS instrument on the upcoming ASTRO-E 2 mission. Cool!

I was once again reminded of how optical and X-ray astronomers speak different languages. While I was at the booth this afternoon, a young man came up and asked what an X-ray spectrum looked like. I wasn’t sure what he meant, since a spectrum is a spectrum. Then he started asking how we “split our beams”, and I knew there had to be miscommunication of some sort. He mentioned that he was an optical astronomer, and they split their beams to get spectra. So I explained that in X-ray astronomy, we get so few photons coming into our detectors that we can count them…individually…and attach an energy to each incoming photon as it arrives. Fortunately this satisfied him. It reminded me a bit of my proposal defense, where Dr. Harrington was asking questions that seemed really odd to me. It was only when I realized that optical and X-ray astronomers live in different worlds that I started to understand his questions.

I decided to get room service tonight, since I haven’t even come close to spending my perdium any day this week. I foolishly got not just an entree, but dessert. I ended up finishing all of my sandwich, salad and french fries, only to discover I was too full. So, I called Maggie and talked for a bit until I was ready to see how much of the peach cobbler ala mode I could finish. Yum.

AAS, Day 2

Ugh. I think I talked with about 5 people today at the booth (real conversations…I did tel more people that they could take pens, etc.)

The longest conversation I had was with Nick, the head of our lab (he’s not counted in the 5 people, since technically he’s here with the booth). He asked about my research with Kim, and we talked just a bit about the Constellation-X web page work I’ve been doing. Hopefully I didn’t make too much an ass of myself.

Perhaps the best part of manning the booth is people-watching. While I don’t like to encourage stereotypes, scientists are, in general, some of the most…um…interesting people. Take Mr. Beard, for example. Pat and I both spied portly man sporting the most…um…interesting beard. He had shaved his chin and cheeks, but left a bushy undergrowth on his neck. How…um…interesting.

I also went to one of the talks sessions this afternoon. The session was on Active Galaxies, my area of research, but I was disappointed that both of the speakers scheduled to talk about X-ray observations failed to show up. The other talks were interesting, though I can’t say I remember much about them now.

I was so tired by the end of the day, though, that I was ready to cry. Chris encouraged me to go to the grad student reception after the main sessions, but that would have been enough to put me over the edge. It was supposed to be an opportunity for grads to network with potential job connections. It’s hard for me to deal with that much socialization in one day — just being on display at the Con-X booth all day is nearly more than I can handle (even on a quiet day like today). I’m going to have to come to one of these as just a participant; that way I can bug out for a couple hours in the afternoon, regroup, and then be ready to network in the evening. Or I need to rethink my career, again…

AAS, Day 1

Today was the first “real” day of the conference (yesterday they had registration and a reception in the evening). I got to the booth around 8:30 AM, though things didn’t really pick up until the first morning break at 9:20 AM. There was a lot of activity at that point.

One guy came by asking about the GRB catalog I’ve worked on — sent to me by JD from the Swift GRB mission booth. He had apparently worked with a group that had worked to compile a small GRB catalog covering the time of operation of one of the neutrino detectors. They had concentrated on the BATSE bursts, since the information available was fairly uniform for all of those bursts. I confirmed what they found when they started looking at other catalogs — it’s hard. Converting the various fluxes and fluences from one mission to another requires different equations/methods from instrument to instrument (and may depend on model, in the case of flux).

While doing my own circuit of the booths, I found some information on Project-ASTRO. I had volunteered with PA when they started it up in New Mexico. I’d been hoping to find a PA in the DC area, but there isn’t one. I asked her about this, and part of the challenge is that they no longer have funding to start new locations. So, to get PA started in DC there would have to be someone interested who could ferret out funding from somewhere (NASA IDEAS proposal was one of her suggestions). This is something I’d love to get involved in, but it’s just not the right time. As a half-time grad student, it would be difficult for me to give PA the attention it would require, especially in the start-up phase. Maybe in a few years, after I graduate. I, unfortunately, can’t remember the woman’s name, but hopefully she will e-mail me, becuase she was also interested in the state of Con-X’s EPO program (which will hopefully get started in a year or so, and hopefully I’ll be involved with it). She also offered to be an EPO resource.

There were lots of undergrads meandering about. I talked with a few of them about the work I’ve been doing, and asking about what they might be interested in as far as research. A couple mentioned that they had been thinking about UMD, and even though I’m not the world’s happiest camper at UMD, I did talk the place up, especially considering what their interests were.

I also found a woman who was in much the same school boat as I was in. She had started as a music theory major, and wound up in astrophysics. We comiserated a bit about how none of the credits overlapped, and how far behind it put us. She’s just at the point of considering grad school, but it sounded like she was going to take some time off. I told her about my experience, and applauded her foresight.

I released Contact in the ladies bathroom, and it had disappeared by the time I returned. Now to see if the person who picked it up registers the book.

Called Jim and Maggie — we’re going to try to get together Wednesday evening, unless there is a play at the Shakespeare tavern Thursday night.

I miss Andrew. And I miss our cats. And I miss our bed and our house.

Travel Day

Flew out for the AAS meeting today (American Astronomical Society). They ended up cancelling my flight, but fortunately I was there early enough that I could get on an earlier flight. I ended up getting in to Atlanta an hour earlier than I was scheduled to.

Normally I hate flying, but the crew had a bit of fun with our flight today, so it wasn’t as bad. First, there were several seats available in first class, so the flight attendant collected all the boarding pass stubs, and had a drawing for a seat in first class. They also drew for a sleeve of cookies. Later, after the beverage service, a flight attendant came through asking if anyone would like to play “Let’s Make a Deal”. From anyone saying yes, she asked for various items — a Sam’s Club card, a book of stamps, etc. From me, she asked for a AAA card, so I won a tiny bottle of Bailey’s. Yay! Never mind that it was still before 10 AM — that Bailey’s was quite good.

I was going to meet JD at the baggage claim, mostly as protection from the weirdos that I seem to attract. Unfortunately, his flight was an hour late. So, with my flight an hour early, and his an hour late, I ended up reading in baggage claim for over two hours. Oh well. It was either that, or read in my hotel.

After I connected with JD, and, as it turned out, 3 other people from HEASARC, we took the MARTA to the hotels. After checking in, we started setting-up the booths, even though it was well past 2 PM and we hadn’t had lunch yet. After getting much of the set-up done, we went off for lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe — it was close, open, and easy to find. After a bit more set-up, I headed back to my room, vegging out for the evening. Currently, I’m debating whether to get some dinner or not. I don’t want to leave, and the room service is not cheap. Maybe I could order a pizza….